


Nina Cried Power

by haileyyanneupton



Category: Chicago PD (TV)
Genre: Internalised Homophobia, Negative Self Talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:53:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26694814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haileyyanneupton/pseuds/haileyyanneupton
Summary: Vanessa Rojas has always known who she was, despite how deep down she buried it. It may have taken years, but eventually, she learned to accept it with the help of the people she met along the way. Oh — and the butterflies.
Kudos: 5





	Nina Cried Power

**Author's Note:**

> 🦋 VANESSA ROJAS | CHICAGO P.D 🦋 
> 
> INSPIRED BY ‘NINA CRIED POWER’ BY HOZIER
> 
> WARNINGS: INTERNALISED HOMOPHOBIA, HOMOPHOBIC SLURS

_“It’s not the waking, it’s the rising. It is the grounding of a foot, uncompromising. It’s not forgoing of the lie, it’s not the opening of the eyes — it’s not the waking, it’s the rising.”_

Vanessa Rojas went through 32 different foster homes starting from the time she was three years old. She had learnt early on that if she wanted to survive in the real world, she had to be completely self-sufficient and non-reliant on others for her needs. She had learnt never to leave anything out, hide anything you didn’t want to be found but most of all, she learnt never to give anybody a reason to want to throw you out. The latter had caused Vanessa to repress one of the biggest parts of herself for her entire life, stirring up a concoction of self-hatred and insecurity that would follow her around, leaving a terrible taste behind.

At fifteen years old, Vanessa had her first kiss in a park behind her school. Sure, she had been pecked on the lips once or twice when she was younger by the odd boy here or there, but her first real kiss was different. It was soft and passionate, terrifying yet thrilling, but there was one thing that stood out above all else.

Vanessa’s first _real_ kiss was with a girl.

It kind of just. . . happened. Neither of them had planned nor expected for it to happen, but when it did, Vanessa’s heart almost exploded from beating so fast. It was the first time she had ever even acknowledged to herself that she liked girls, the revelation one that invoked panic as she thought about the repercussions. She would never forget how liberated she felt, thinking ’this is me, this is who I am’, but along with the liberation came a fear and frankly, a disgust in herself that she didn’t know what to do with. Vanessa walked away from the park that day with her head hung low as she made her way back to the eighteenth foster home so far — an older catholic couple — feeling an overwhelming amount of shame that ate away at her like cancer. There was shame for feeling ashamed, shame for the fact that she had enjoyed it so much — everything just got thrown into a pot and then doused over her without warning.

Vanessa had liked the old catholic couple who had taken her in a lot. They were kind, they didn’t use her for money from the state, but most of all — they gave her a family. Though she was fifteen and some would argue that it was a bit old for trips to the zoo with your ‘parents’, Vanessa loved all of the trips they would take her on. One of her favourite places in the world was the butterfly enclosure, the warm temperature mixed in with all of the beautiful creatures that were attracted to the girl as if she were a magnet never failing to bring a smile to her lips. Butterflies had always followed Vanessa — they were her good luck charm in a way — in a world where everything she had was always being taken away, where the ground beneath her was never concrete and she felt like she was endlessly falling, the creatures always came to visit her when she needed them the most. They were her only constant.

Vanessa never did talk to the girl she kissed in the park again. The embarrassment and fear of somebody finding out was too much for her to bear, and though she probably felt even worse about the fact that she was freezing out the girl that she truly had liked for no reason other than her own guilt and shame, she simply couldn’t bare the thought of having her biggest secret blabbed out to the world. Still, curiosity got the best of her, leaving her to utilise the new computer that her foster parents had bought to help her with her schoolwork to work out if she could find even just one other person to relate to. So when her foster parents weren’t home, Vanessa tip-toed of her bedroom and began searching for answers.

Within the week, Vanessa was on to her nineteenth foster home. The catholic couple had gone through Vanessa’s search history only to uncover her secret, leaving the fifteen-year-old completely heartbroken. They wouldn’t even look the girl in the eye after they had found out, telling the agency that things with Vanessa just weren’t going to work out. She had been with them for nearly six months — it was the longest she had ever stayed with any foster family — now it was back to a week here, two days there, and maybe at most a month somewhere else. It was on that day that she told herself she wasn’t ever going to let anybody get that close ever again. Not even herself. Just a few months later she sat in the garden of her twenty-second foster home, making the decision to live as if she were just like everybody else. She felt like a fraud deep down, but she thought it was the right decision; the monarch butterfly that had landed on her knee with its glorious wings and all only cemented it in her head even further.

🦋 🦋 🦋 🦋 

_“It’s not the song, it is the singing. It’s the heaven of the human spirit ringing. It is the bringing of the line, it is the bearing of the lie — it’s not the waking, it’s the rising."_

From then on, at her new school — she went through a lot of those, too — Vanessa reinvented herself as the boy crazy, typical teenage girl that everybody expected and wanted her to be. She’d pick a boy to obsess over with her friends, talking all about how cute he was and how much she wanted to kiss him because that’s what she was meant to do. . . right? When her friends would switch from boy to boy, so would she. Vanessa had no idea what she was doing, but going with the flow seemed to work well enough for her.

One night, Vanessa snuck out of one of the group homes she had been staying in for that week to go to a party thrown by a bunch of seniors at her high school. She was barely a junior, so getting an invite was a big deal to her and her friends — for some reason unbeknownst to her, making yourself come across as if you were older than you actually were was all the rage. What Vanessa hadn’t expected was being lured up to a bedroom upstairs with one of the said seniors, the door closing with a firm click as he crashed his lips upon her’s forcefully.

“Woah." Vanessa’s eyes went wide as she pulled away, her hand on the boy’s chest to keep him a safe distance away as her heart pounded. “What are you doing, man?”

“Come on Vanessa,” the boy huffed, rolling his eyes slightly. “What did you think we were coming up here for?”

“I-I. . .” Her voice trailed off as she took one step, two steps, then three steps backwards. “I don’t want to.”

“We don’t have to do — that — we can just kiss.”

Vanessa shook her head. “I don’t want to do that either.”

“Then what do you want to do, Rojas?”

“I don’t want to — I don’t want to do anything. I. . .”

The boy huffed yet again, this time it was in a much more exasperated manner. “Fine. What are you, anyway? Are you a dyke?”

Vanessa’s heart dropped to the pit of her stomach as panic ensued. Fear crossed her face before it morphed into pure and utter rage — how could he dare insinuate that she was _that_? She wasn’t that. She was just like everybody else. _She had to be._

“I am not!” Vanessa hissed angrily, forcing herself closer to the boy as she leaned in for a kiss once again. “Come on, let’s do this.”

“Didn’t you just say you didn’t want to —“

“I changed my mind.”

🦋 🦋 🦋 🦋

_"It’s not the wall, but what’s behind it. Lord, the fear of foul men is mere assignment and everything that we’re denied by keeping the divide — it’s not the waking, it’s the rising."_

It was that night that Vanessa lost her virginity. It wasn’t at all how she had imagined it, nor did it live up to the expectations everybody else had laid out for her, but it was the closest she had ever come to filling this emptiness in her soul that was eating away. Yet as the years went on and she denied herself to the truth, with each man she slept with, the emptiness only grew bigger. Each man unintentionally would shatter a tiny piece of her as they gave her the sense of relief that only lasted while they were skin to skin — being intimate with a man was the only way to convince herself that she was straight. Hypersexuality became Vanessa’s coping mechanism for the internalised self-loathing that she felt, and though it never truly made the feelings go away, though she never truly enjoyed it — it got so close to making it all go away that if she tried hard enough, she could pretend for just a second that it did.

At 20, well and truly aged out of foster care, Vanessa was without any kind of guidance or fall back. Still loaning out her body to any man she could find, Vanessa wasn’t exactly familiar with healthy coping mechanisms or outlets alike. Her form of taking control of the world around her involved testing the limits in a newfound talent in thievery, stealing everything from candy bars to moderately priced jewellery for the sole reason of seeing if she could. She had only ever been caught a handful of times and had been lucky to get off with barely a slap on the wrist — at least, that was until she and her long time friend Luis went out one night, the two of them slightly tipsy, with plans to jack a car. Why? They didn’t know. But testing the boundaries and breaking the rules was the closest thing Vanessa could get to a distraction without needing to pretend she wanted sex.

Vanessa and Luis Reyes had a strange relationship. They were roommates — had been since they both aged out of the system together. Luis had always had the girl’s back since the age of eight when they met at one of their many group homes — no matter how many times things got shifted around, they’d always manage to find their way back to each other somehow. He was the only one who knew what it felt like to have the rug pulled from beneath your feet over and over and over again, the only one who knew just how cruel the world could be to the less fortunate. Though he wasn’t always the best influence, Luis always had Vanessa’s best interests at heart. He was her best friend — well, they were a little more than friends — it was an on-again, off-again thing — sometimes Vanessa convinced herself that Luis was basically her boyfriend simply so that she could use it as her own defence. How could she like girls if she was with a guy?

“V,” Luis whispered in the girl’s ear as sirens sounded in the distance. “Run. Get out of here. Don’t wait up.”

Vanessa’s eyes grew to the size of saucepans, shaking her head with a hand against the window of the Mercedes they were trying to jack as she froze. She was baffled that he would even suggest such a thing. “Luis! No way! You already have a record, they’ll throw you in jail and —“

“Exactly, V. I already have a record. I don’t mind taking the fall if it means you still have a clean sheet.”

“But this is a big deal! It’s not some petty theft charge, man, you’re risking serious time —“

“Just promise me you won’t waste your second chance. Do something good, yeah? If you’re only going to go out and get caught doing something dumb next week, let me know so I don’t waste my breath.”

“Luis —“

“V, go. Run while you can."

It was the biggest sacrifice anybody had ever made for Vanessa. Thanks to Luis, Vanessa walked away without a blemish to her name. She felt terrible to have to watch her best friend walk away in bracelets, knowing that he would for sure face jail time with his other offences haunting his name but it was too late to change her mind now. She had to live up to what Luis had asked of her — there was no more fucking around. That day, as she walked back to the apartment which she would now be living in alone — at least for the time being — Vanessa realised what she wanted to do, the realisation punching her in the gut with its sheer force.

Vanessa wanted to be a Chicago Police Officer.

And just like they had so many times in the past, a butterfly landed on the end of the flower charm dangling from her keychain, staring up at her in all of its glory. Despite the misery Vanessa had put herself through for the last five years, despite the hell within her that had been unleashed as her soul slowly yet painfully tore apart as it fought between conformity and the truth, the sight of the butterfly was one she knew all too well.

Everything was going to be okay. _Somehow_.

Vanessa was accepted into the academy and flew through it with ease. Her street smarts came in handy when it came to working her way around certain situations, her past giving her a competitive edge that helped her to stand out from the rest. She finished the top of her class as she walked through her graduation ceremony in her dress blues and in amongst the group of graduates, Vanessa was approached by a Lieutenant working in Organised Crime, a look in his eye that told the woman he had plans for her.

Before she knew it she was moved to an undercover apartment and assumed the identity of Nina Rodriguez, a bartender at Darius Walker’s bar. She slowly gathered information on the seasoned criminal and fed it back to the Lieutenant, making sure not to get closer than she had to with anybody who came in and out. She had no problem giving off the illusion that she was all buddy-buddy with the other guys working in the bar, but she never connected with anybody until a man walked in one evening with a charming smile that she couldn’t help but return.

“I’m just saying, women don’t understand how hard it is to be a guy these days. We’ve gotta be tough, but we’ve also gotta be sensitive and —“

“Contradictory,” Vanessa smirked over at the man and his friend, handing them both a drink each. “I know. But trust me — no woman is asking you to save the world and no good one is asking you to pay her bills. At the end of the day, it’s simple.”

The man cocked an eyebrow curiously as he took a sip, beckoning for Vanessa to go on.

"We’re just asking you to be nice.”

There was this look in his eye that Vanessa hadn’t seen in any of the other guys she had been working among for the last three months — though it was familiar, she still failed to place it. He was new and in turn that made her weary; she didn’t particularly feel like being hunted down if they realised she was an undercover cop. Just like his words, she felt contradicted by her instincts — she wanted to trust him, to get to know him, but she knew getting too close could ruin everything.

Still, her fear didn’t stop her from making friendly conversation in an attempt to pry information from anybody that she could. As the man walked out from Darius’s office one day, she could see by the look on his face that something was wrong — usually, when something was wrong around here, it meant someone was about to be killed. The death of Smokey, a drug runner who they had just lost only a few days beforehand was a prime example.

“Your goldfish die or something?” Vanessa joked lightly, trying to earn a smile out of the man.

He turned back to her, an almost vacant expression upon his features as he shook his head lightly. “Nah. I’m just deep in thought.”

“‘Bout what?”

The man glanced over at Darius’s office briefly. “Business.”

“What kind of business?” As soon as the words escaped her mouth, she shook her head and wished for them to retreat back. Though she didn’t really know him, she liked the guy — he seemed nice, and she knew that if he told her anything illegal she would have to report it. “Wait — Don’t tell me. I don’t even wanna know.”

Vanessa glanced down at the bar she was sitting by for a moment, trying to gather up her words and organise them so that they would come out in a cohesive sentence. She didn’t even know this guy’s name let alone anything about what he was doing with Darius Walker — whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. She could use the excuse that she was working her undercover assignment to find out more, right?

“Buy you a drink?” Vanessa — Nina — offered, raising an eyebrow at the man hopefully.

“Nah.” His tone seemed defeated. “I gotta go. Raincheck?”

“I don’t do rainchecks, sweetie,” she answered simply. “Especially on a sunny day.”

“But you know how that Chicago weather is."

Was this the first man she truly. . . liked? Vanessa couldn’t tell the difference at this point between real attraction and fake attraction. There was something comforting about the man, something that made her crazy trying to work it out — that was until they drew guns at each other and she had to break her cover. Suddenly, everything made sense and Vanessa realised she should have trusted her gut to begin with. After relying on her instincts for so long, Vanessa had developed a pretty good sense of judging character. She soon learned that the man’s name was actually Kevin Atwater, an officer working out of Hank Voight’s intelligence unit — a place she was going to have to become familiar with after being offered not just a job there, but a place to live by one of the detectives on the unit — Hailey Upton. Now that she was out from her undercover mission and officially in the police force, working on the most elite unit in the whole city, Vanessa’s life was finally coming together. This was what she was meant to be doing.

Despite the fact that she was finally finding her place in the world, there was still something tugging at her sleeve, begging to be addressed. She knew what it was; she knew it wasn’t going to go away no matter how much she pretended it wasn’t there, but it wouldn’t stop her from trying. It was costing her her happiness, leaving her in a constant state of misery that was sure to catch up to her — fast. She had tried everything, searching for something to fill the void and the only thing that had ever worked was faking it.

Vanessa at some point had managed to trick herself into believing that she was falling for Kevin. She felt at ease around him — something she hadn’t ever felt around any other man, the woman mistaking that feeling for attraction as they managed to grow closer and closer to each other until they were in bed together. As she sat straddled over the man, throwing her shirt off to the side, tears pricked at her eyes and in a split second began rolling down her cheeks without warning.

“Hey, wait –” Kevin placed his hands on the woman’s shoulders as he sat up with nothing but concern in his eyes. “– are you okay?”

Vanessa nodded furiously. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.” Kevin gripped Vanessa’s hand gently. “What’s going on, V?”

What it was about Kevin, she would never know. She would never know what made her spill her guts to him that night, what made her trust him so much. She would never know why the universe had bought them together or how she could let her guard down around him, but she could do all of those things without even thinking about it.

“There’s something wrong with me,” Vanessa cried gently, her hands trembling as Kevin pulled her body into his. “There’s something _so_ wrong with me."

Kevin shook his head lightly as he tried to comfort the woman. “No, V, there’s nothing wrong with you. Why would you say that? If you don’t want to do anything tonight, that doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with you—”

Before she could even process it, the words were flowing out of her mouth in a rambling babble that seemed endless. Vanessa let someone in on her secret for the first time ever, telling the man how she really felt. How she had been dealing with her attraction to women, and how much she hated herself for it. To her, being gay wasn’t a bad thing for other people — only for her. It meant she was different, she was a target. And being a target terrified her more than anything else in this world. Little did she know that from that day on, Kevin made a promise to himself that he was going to protect Vanessa no matter what.

🦋 🦋 🦋 🦋 

_“And I could cry power — power has been cried by those stronger than me. Straight into the face that tells you to rattle your chains if you want to be free."_

Slowly, Vanessa fought against her own inhibitions as she branched out in an attempt to accept herself for the first time in her life. Kevin was the only person who she had said anything to and in turn was playing fake boyfriend to keep guys off of her back as she navigated her way around this completely new person she wasn’t aware she had within her. Hailey was the next to find out, though Vanessa had a feeling that Hailey had already known — in fact, she was more surprised when Vanessa told her she was ‘dating’ Kevin than what she was when Vanessa came out to her as a lesbian.

It was hard not to think about how much a supportive family would have helped her grow when she was younger. If the old catholic couple had accepted Vanessa for who she was when she was fifteen instead of shunning her the way that they did, they could have saved her years of heartbreak, years of pain — years of self-hatred. They were years that she would never get back, but Vanessa wasn’t one to dwell too much in the past. As soon as she started to acknowledge her feelings rather than pushing them down until they were ready to burst, it was as if a heavy weight was lifted off of her chest — Vanessa felt like she was floating.

Vanessa felt free.

The first time she kissed a girl was — like she had described it — liberating. The next time she kissed a girl was nearly ten years later — the feeling that erupted in a hotel room of a girl she had been talking to for months was nothing short of empowering. Being able to embrace who she was and even find a girlfriend who she loved more than anything in the entire world was electric, and Vanessa couldn’t imagine going back to how she was living before. Every day was a battle to reprogram her brain into loving herself — all of herself — but she had never shied away from a challenge. She wasn’t about to start now.

🦋 🦋 🦋 🦋 

_"But I could cry power, ‘cause power is my love when my love reaches to me."_

Nina was her turning point. When Vanessa was Nina, she was starting a new chapter of her life that allowed her to break her shackles. She could be whoever she wanted to be when she was Nina, and after meeting Kevin that night, Vanessa was sure that she owed the man her life. She hadn’t realised how bad things were until someone pulled her up from beneath the water and showed her the light for the first time in forever, the sun beaming down on her skin giving her a newfound sense of hope and confidence.

For the first time in her life, Vanessa felt whole. She felt complete. Surrounded by the family she had made, she feared nothing but the dark and spiders, leaving her to thank Nina for what she had done for her. That undercover assignment had completely changed her life for the better — she wouldn’t want it any other way.

As she sat at a table at Molly’s with her family and friends around her, her fingers interlocked with the woman she called her girlfriend and an arm around Kevin, nothing but love could be felt. The love glowed among them all as they raised their beers, a small smile on Vanessa’s face as she uttered the words that would hold a special place in her heart.

“Nina cried power.”

Nobody knew how it got there, but as Vanessa lowered her bottle and held it tightly to her chest, she caught sight of a winged insect that she was all too familiar with. There on the neck of the bottle sat a beautiful butterfly, slowly flapping its wings as it made its presence known to the woman. Vanessa could have sworn that it looked right into her eyes before taking off in flight, disappearing out the door as she felt her heart warm.

She was okay.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you like this! I’m really proud of it even though it’s not perfect and kinda gets a bit messy at some parts but if you liked this please let me know because i really really like writing oneshots like these based off of songs. Also if you have any requests for any one chicago characters and a song you want a oneshot based off of let me know <3


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